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Thankfully I think Web3 (dapps made from composable protocols collaboratively developed by everyone) will form strong competition and maybe even replace Google

by Sargos 5y ago

Thankfully I think Web3 (dapps made from composable protocols collaboratively developed by everyone) will form strong competition and maybe even replace Google in the next 5-10 years. Services like social media, finance, gaming, productivity, etc will all be interoperable by default providing a seamless user experience and be built by millions of developers around the world. Each company coding only what they specialize in and being built on top of existing protocols leads to massive efficiency and what looks like exponential growth. Tech monopolies will likely fade away over time like the early industrial revolution monopolies did just at an accelerated pace due to things working at internet speed. Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network.

ozten 5y ago
What are the more successful DAO or dapps we can study, to evaluate this model?
- Sargos 5y ago
  An example I find interesting and easy to explain is Pool Together which is a no-loss lottery where you can buy $10 in lottery tickets for a chance at a $3,000 weekly prize but if you don't win your tickets still work for the next round and even 10 rounds from now you can withdraw your full $10. It works by putting everyone's money in the same account which earns ~6% interest savings account and the winner actually gets the accrued interest as prize money. This project was built by a team of maybe a dozen people but is rather complex and needs a stablecoin (DAI from MakerDAO), an interest bearing account (Compound), an account system (Ethereum public/private key), and the running of the protocol (the smart contacts are run free for devs by Ethereum and users pay to perform actions) to make the system work. All of these dependencies took other teams years to build and the small Pool Together team leveraged that to make a cool little product by just adding a small amount on top. The ability for small teams to make functional products which can then be used by others to quickly spin up their own experiments and products is incredibly exciting to me and it's a much better method of development then the traditional closed vertically integrated tech giant where innovation is limited by bureaucracy.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Is there an example that is not related to gambling or moving around money? As it doesn’t seem to be very productive in countries where online gambling is restricted or regulated…
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    6% interest paid by who?
    - Sargos 5y ago
      Compound is a lending protocol so people take out collateralized loans out and pay an interest rate on that loan which is paid to the lending pool the money is deposited into.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - Godel_unicode 5y ago
      It's a Ponzi scheme, which depends on more people buying in.
ThePhysicist 5y ago
I'm pretty pessimistic about decentralized (blockchain-based) apps as well, almost all projects have been overtaken by speculators and fraud seems to be rampant, so I would not go near any of those. There really is no need to use blockchain technology to build decentralized infrastructure, most Internet 1.0 protocols are decentralized & federated and none of them relies on cryptocurrencies or a blockchain to function. So, sorry, but for me this whole movement is BS and seems more like a pyramid scheme than a real effort to build something useful.
CharlesW 5y ago
> Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network. Google literally built their business on a decentralized worldwide developer network.
arcturus17 5y ago
Why would my mother or yours, as internet users, care about anything that you just said, in a way that justifies a prediction that Google, Facebook or others will lose their monopolies in 5-10 years?
- Sargos 5y ago
  The UX will be much easier for normal people as they don't need to create a new account, find their friends, etc each time they go to a new website or use a new app which by itself is a pretty big driver of acceptance. Users tend to care about what we call "network effect" which is what gives websites like Facebook such lock-in. Web3 apps that use your existing social graph let you simply use new features and use cases without needing to build the entire social graph from scratch. With an open ecosystem where anyone can add features and create new apps that complement the existing use cases the amount of utility and innovation will likely outstrip organizations like Facebook which is already becoming bogged down in bureaucracy and losing ground to networks such as TikTok. In the Web3 world the equivalent of Facebook and TikTok wouldn't be directly competing as they are part of the same network and function as networks of two different user groups while allowing further experimentation of use cases that might compose different aspects of both systems into something new without users needing to re-create everything from scratch. The lower barrier to entry for developers to innovate and UX improvements for end users stemming from a seamless unified ecosystem seems like a better experience for everyone. It'll be interesting to see how everything plays out.
- XorNot 5y ago
  People don't care about brands, they care about functionality. There's a reasonable problem in the market that every company is now trying to take over the gatekeeper role, which kills the value proposition - Netflix made a heck of an inroad on piracy, then everyone else launched their streaming services and suddenly it's almost back to the bad old days - and certainly it's very hard to discover where to watch things now. This is also why Steam has mindshare: I just plain don't really want multiple "I am your games platform" apps - to the point I ignore new releases till they're on Steam. So if someone creates a decentralized platform that can provide those things more easily, that'll win - but, I'm pretty skeptical it'll happen: decentralized platforms have been atrocious at providing the type of services companies actually need, like a payment system that is just "I enter my credit card number and you give me services I requested" or "being easier to use". But one place to get everything? That's a killer app.

by Sargos 5y ago

ozten 5y ago

What are the more successful DAO or dapps we can study, to evaluate this model?

Sargos 5y ago
An example I find interesting and easy to explain is Pool Together which is a no-loss lottery where you can buy $10 in lottery tickets for a chance at a $3,000 weekly prize but if you don't win your tickets still work for the next round and even 10 rounds from now you can withdraw your full $10. It works by putting everyone's money in the same account which earns ~6% interest savings account and the winner actually gets the accrued interest as prize money. This project was built by a team of maybe a dozen people but is rather complex and needs a stablecoin (DAI from MakerDAO), an interest bearing account (Compound), an account system (Ethereum public/private key), and the running of the protocol (the smart contacts are run free for devs by Ethereum and users pay to perform actions) to make the system work. All of these dependencies took other teams years to build and the small Pool Together team leveraged that to make a cool little product by just adding a small amount on top. The ability for small teams to make functional products which can then be used by others to quickly spin up their own experiments and products is incredibly exciting to me and it's a much better method of development then the traditional closed vertically integrated tech giant where innovation is limited by bureaucracy.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  Is there an example that is not related to gambling or moving around money? As it doesn’t seem to be very productive in countries where online gambling is restricted or regulated…
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  6% interest paid by who?
  - Sargos 5y ago
    Compound is a lending protocol so people take out collateralized loans out and pay an interest rate on that loan which is paid to the lending pool the money is deposited into.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - Godel_unicode 5y ago
    It's a Ponzi scheme, which depends on more people buying in.

ThePhysicist 5y ago

I'm pretty pessimistic about decentralized (blockchain-based) apps as well, almost all projects have been overtaken by speculators and fraud seems to be rampant, so I would not go near any of those. There really is no need to use blockchain technology to build decentralized infrastructure, most Internet 1.0 protocols are decentralized & federated and none of them relies on cryptocurrencies or a blockchain to function. So, sorry, but for me this whole movement is BS and seems more like a pyramid scheme than a real effort to build something useful.

CharlesW 5y ago

> Even Google can't compete with a decentralized worldwide developer network. Google literally built their business on a decentralized worldwide developer network.

arcturus17 5y ago

Why would my mother or yours, as internet users, care about anything that you just said, in a way that justifies a prediction that Google, Facebook or others will lose their monopolies in 5-10 years?

Sargos 5y ago
The UX will be much easier for normal people as they don't need to create a new account, find their friends, etc each time they go to a new website or use a new app which by itself is a pretty big driver of acceptance. Users tend to care about what we call "network effect" which is what gives websites like Facebook such lock-in. Web3 apps that use your existing social graph let you simply use new features and use cases without needing to build the entire social graph from scratch. With an open ecosystem where anyone can add features and create new apps that complement the existing use cases the amount of utility and innovation will likely outstrip organizations like Facebook which is already becoming bogged down in bureaucracy and losing ground to networks such as TikTok. In the Web3 world the equivalent of Facebook and TikTok wouldn't be directly competing as they are part of the same network and function as networks of two different user groups while allowing further experimentation of use cases that might compose different aspects of both systems into something new without users needing to re-create everything from scratch. The lower barrier to entry for developers to innovate and UX improvements for end users stemming from a seamless unified ecosystem seems like a better experience for everyone. It'll be interesting to see how everything plays out.
XorNot 5y ago
People don't care about brands, they care about functionality. There's a reasonable problem in the market that every company is now trying to take over the gatekeeper role, which kills the value proposition - Netflix made a heck of an inroad on piracy, then everyone else launched their streaming services and suddenly it's almost back to the bad old days - and certainly it's very hard to discover where to watch things now. This is also why Steam has mindshare: I just plain don't really want multiple "I am your games platform" apps - to the point I ignore new releases till they're on Steam. So if someone creates a decentralized platform that can provide those things more easily, that'll win - but, I'm pretty skeptical it'll happen: decentralized platforms have been atrocious at providing the type of services companies actually need, like a payment system that is just "I enter my credit card number and you give me services I requested" or "being easier to use". But one place to get everything? That's a killer app.